To place an obituary, please include the information from the obituary checklist below in an email to obits@pioneerpress.com. There is no option to place them through our website. Feel free to contact our obituary desk at 651-228-5263 with any questions.
General Information:
Your full name,
Address (City, State, Zip Code),
Phone number,
And an alternate phone number (if any)
Obituary Specification:
Name of Deceased,
Obituary Text,
A photo in a JPEG or PDF file is preferable, TIF and other files are accepted, we will contact you if there are any issues with the photo.
Ad Run dates
There is a discount for running more than one day, but this must be scheduled on the first run date to apply.
If a photo is used, it must be used for both days for the discount to apply, contact us for more information.
Policies:
Verification of Death:
In order to publish obituaries a name and phone number of funeral home/cremation society is required. We must contact the funeral home/cremation society handling the arrangements during their business hours to verify the death. If the body of the deceased has been donated to the University of Minnesota Anatomy Bequest Program, or a similar program, their phone number is required for verification.
Please allow enough time to contact them especially during their limited weekend hours.
A death certificate is also acceptable for this purpose but only one of these two options are necessary.
Guestbook and Outside Websites:
We are not allowed to reference other media sources with a guestbook or an obituary placed elsewhere when placing an obituary in print and online. We may place a website for a funeral home or a family email for contact instead; contact us with any questions regarding this matter.
Obituary Process:
Once your submission is completed, we will fax or email a proof for review prior to publication in the newspaper. This proof includes price and days the notice is scheduled to appear.
Please review the proof carefully. We must be notified of errors or changes before the notice appears in the Pioneer Press based on each day’s deadlines.
After publication, we will not be responsible for errors that may occur after final proofing.
Online:
Changes to an online obituary can be handled through the obituary desk. Call us with further questions.
Payment Procedure:
Pre-payment is required for all obituary notices prior to publication by the deadline specified below in our deadline schedule. Please call 651-228-5263 with your payment information after you have received the proof and approved its contents.
Credit Card: Payment accepted by phone only due to PCI (Payment Card Industry) regulations
EFT: Check by phone. Please provide your routing number and account number.
Cash: Accepted at our FRONT COUNTER Monday – Friday from 8:00AM – 3:30PM
Rates:
The minimum charge is $162 for the first 10 lines.
Every line after the first 10 is $12.20.
If the ad is under 10 lines it will be charged the minimum rate of $162.
On a second run date, the lines are $8.20 per line, starting w/ the first line.
For example: if first run date was 20 lines the cost would be $164.
Each photo published is $125 per day.
For example: 2 photos in the paper on 2 days would be 4 photo charges at $500.
Deadlines:
Please follow deadline times to ensure your obituary is published on the day requested.
Hours
Deadline (no exceptions)
Ad
Photos
MEMORIAM (NON-OBITUARY) REQUEST
Unlike an obituary, Memoriam submissions are remembrances of a loved one who has passed. The rates for a memoriam differ from obituaries.
Please call or email us for more memoriam information
Please call 651-228-5280 for more information.
HOURS: Monday – Friday 8:00AM – 5:00PM (CLOSED WEEKENDS and HOLIDAYS)
Please submit your memoriam ad to memoriams@pioneerpress.com or call 651-228-5280.
By LORNE COOK, Associated Press
BRUSSELS (AP) — Defense ministers from European countries with borders close to Russia and Ukraine held talks on Friday about building a “drone wall” to plug gaps in their defenses following several airspace violations.
Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland have been working on a drone wall project, but in March, the European Union’s executive branch rejected a joint Estonia-Lithuania request for funds to set one up.
Since then, Europe’s borders have been increasingly tested by rogue drones. Russia has been blamed for some of the incidents, but denies that anything was done on purpose or that it played a role.
NATO jets scrambled on Sept. 10 to shoot down a number of Russian drones that breached Polish airspace, in an expensive response to a relatively cheap threat. Airports in Denmark were temporarily closed this week after drones were flown nearby.
EU Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius chaired Friday’s talks. The meeting, via video-link, included those countries plus officials from Bulgaria, Denmark, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, along with representatives from Ukraine and NATO.
The aim is to establish what equipment those countries have to counter drone intrusions, what more they might need to plug any gaps along NATO’s eastern flank, and for Kubilius work out where EU funds might be found to help the effort.
The focus is on improving the detection and tracking of small and hard-to-spot drones, and coming up with a joint way to respond to any intrusions. EU leaders will discuss the meeting conclusions at a summit in Copenhagen on Wednesday.
While the effort will initially focus on the eastern flank closest to Russia and Ukraine, the commission hopes that the initiative will be taken up by other countries across the 27-nation bloc.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said earlier this month that Europe “must heed the call of our Baltic friends and build a drone wall.”
“This is not an abstract ambition. It is the bedrock of credible defense,” von der Leyen told EU lawmakers.
It should be, she said, “a European capability developed together, deployed together, and sustained together, that can respond in real time. One that leaves no ambiguity as to our intentions. Europe will defend every inch of its territory.”
Von der Leyen said that $7 billion would be earmarked to set up a drone alliance with Ukraine, whose armed forces are using the unmanned aerial vehicles to inflict around two-thirds of all military equipment losses sustained by Russian forces.
Originally Published: September 26, 2025 at 6:41 AM CDT